Philippine Postal Corporation

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Philippine Postal Corporation

Type	State-owned (government monopoly)
Founded	Manila, Philippines (1992)
Headquarters	Manila, Philippines
Key people	Hector RR. Villanueva, Chairman Dario C. Rama, Postmaster General
Industry	Trucking
Products	First Class mail, Domestic Mail, Logistics
Revenue	unknown
Employees	18,000
Website	www.philpost.gov.ph

The Philippine Postal Corporation, (Filipino: Korporasyong Pilipino sa Koreo), abbreviated as PhilPost, is a government-owned and operated corporation responsible for providing postal services in the Philippines. It has a total of 18,000 employees and runs more than 2,000 post offices. Philpost is based in the Philippines's primary post office, the imposing Manila Central Post Office, which overlooks the Pasig River. It is presently under the authority of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) as an attached agency. Its policy-making body is the Board of Directors composed of seven (7) members that include the Postmaster General who, at the same time, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the corporation.

The Philippine Postal Savings Bank, one of three government-owned banks in the Philippines, was organized under Philpost. However, it is a separate company today.

1 History
2 Criticism
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The Philippine postal system has a history spanning over some 250 years. In 1767, the first post office was established in the city of Manila, which was later organized under a new postal district of Spain, encompassing Manila and the entire Philippine archipelago, in 1779. The postal district was reestablished on December 5, 1837. A year later, Manila became known as a leading center of postal services within Asia. Spain joined the Universal Postal Union in 1875, which was announced in the Philippines two years later.

During the Philippine Revolution, President Emilio Aguinaldo ordered the establishment of a postal service to provide postal services to Filipinos during that time. It was later organized as a bureau under today's Department of Trade and Industry, then known as the Department of Trade, on September 5, 1902, by virtue of Act No. 426, which was passed by the Philippine Commission. The Philippines eventually joined the Universal Postal Union, this time as a sovereign entity, on January 1, 1922.

While the Manila Central Post Office building, the center of Philippine postal services and the headquarters of the then-Bureau of Posts, was completed in its present-day Neo-Classical style in 1926, it was destroyed during World War II. It was rebuilt in 1946, after the war.

With the overhaul of the Philippine bureaucracy in 1987, the Bureau of Posts was renamed the Postal Service Office, or PSO, by virtue of Executive Order No. 125, which was issued by then-President Corazon Aquino on April 13, 1987. It was also that order that placed the PSO under the DOTC. On April 2, 1992, by virtue of Republic Act No. 7354, otherwise known as the Postal Service Act of 1992, the PSO became the present-day Philpost. The law also gave it the authority to reopen the then-closed Philippine Postal Savings Bank, which was reopened on July 21, 1994 by then-President Fidel V. Ramos.

It was primarily established to undertake and implement an intensive modernization and development program geared towards improving the country's postal system to best serve that country's postal needs.

[edit] Criticism

Philpost has been criticized for its ineffectiveness in fighting theft and corruption in the Philippine postal system. Other than the suspiciously slow rate of delivery of post, post office employees have been accused of diverting mail to other addresses without authorization from the recipient and feeling envelopes to see anything worth stealing from. Many people have complained over this practice, but no concrete actions have been taken by Philpost or the Philippine government, resulting in loss of trust in the postal system and more people looking to couriers to do the job the post office can do.